We recently hosted our first SuperJam Tea Party in Bolton, the hometown of Peter Kay.
The tea party was very kindly hosted by the teachers and pupils of Canon Slade School; who got excited about SuperJam after I visited their school to share my story. About seventy elderly people from the local community came along and enjoyed a performance from the school band.
I'd like to say how impressed we were at SuperJam about all of the work the pupils put into the event; they even baked the scones themselves during their lunch break!
Hopefully this will become a regular event and will grow and grow over the coming months and years.
If you would like to run a tea party in your school, workplace or community, please get in touch. We will do everything we can to help you; not least provide you with some delicious SuperJam!
The SuperJam Adventure Reaches The Magic Kingdom...
At the weekend, I visited my old pal Mickey Mouse at Disneyland Paris. He loves SuperJam*.
I was very kindly invited by European Study Tours to speak to 1,600 British school kids who were on an amazing business studies and ICT school trip.
After I went on the roller coasters, I spoke in a massive Disney auditorium to the students; sharing with them the amazing adventure that I have been on over the past few years. I told them the story of how I took my Gran's recipe from the kitchen table to the shelves of Waitrose and other massive supermarket chains.
The students enjoyed the talk and were generous enough to laugh at my awful jokes. They made me feel like a celebrity by queuing up for about forty five minutes to have their pictures taken with me!
Thanks again to European Study Tours and all of the pupils on the trip. See you next time Mickey!
I've very gratefully been invited to speak at a variety of events over the coming months. I figured I should pop them onto the blog, incase you fancy coming along. Some of the talks are at conferences that you need to buy a ticket for.
28th January: 'Enterprise Spotlight' at the University of Hertfordshire, 6pm-8pm.
2nd February: 'My Life is my Business' event at Darwen Aldridge Community Academy, 11am-4pm.
3rd February: Strathclyde University SEN event, All Bar One, Glasgow, 7pm-10pm.
1st March: Disneyland Paris, European Study Tours, all day.
6th March: Scottish Youth Parliament, Lanarkshire
10th March: Use Your Loaf event, Durham, all day.
11th March, CIPD Conference, Perth, all day.
17th March, Philip Allen Updates event, London, all day.
24th March: San Juan University, Puerto Rico
25th March: Columbia University, New York City
30th March: West Cheshire College, Chester
16th April: Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Last week, I was very kindly invited to speak to the pupils at a school on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.
The pupils, aged 14-16, were working on coming up with ideas to set up their own small businesses as part of an after school group run by the "Mentermon", a government-backed organisation that aims to foster enterprise on the island.
I shared the story of how SuperJam came about and how we got the SuperJam Tea Parties off the ground. The kids were very enthusiastic and asked questions for about half an hour.
While I was on Anglesey, I got to stop off at "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", a small village that holds the Guinness Book of Records title of having the longest place name in the world.
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The Minginish Community Hall on the Isle of Skye in the north of Scotland recently hosted a fantastic SuperJam tea party. You can see all of the pictures here.
The elderly guests enjoyed plenty of scones and SuperJam, sandwiches and pots of tea. There was even a performance from the school choir from the local primary school - Carbost Primary School.
We are hoping that there will now be a more regular tea party there, as it was the first we've had on the island.
Thanks a million to Graham Campbell, who put in a huge amount of work to make the event happen.
If you would like to run a SuperJam tea party for older people in your local community; please get in touch and we will support you in every way we can to make it happen!
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I was recently interviewed about how SuperJam came about by the fantastic website Smarta.com. They have interviews with all kinds of inventors, entrepreneurs and business minds; check it out!
In this interview with myself, the founder of SuperJam, we talk about my first ever business (a small scale chicken farm in my parent's back garden at the age of 10!), the set backs I faced in getting SuperJam off the ground and all of the people who helped me out. It is the same story that I have recently been sharing as a speaker at a lot of events at schools, colleges, universities and conferences across the country.
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Last week, I shared the story of the SuperJam adventure with a few hundred school kids at the Changeworks Make Waste History Conference at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh.
I also spent the day running workshops for four groups of pupils, giving them the opportunity to come up with their own enterprising ideas to try and reduce food waste. They then pitched their ideas to the whole group, 'Dragon's Den style', and one team was voted the winner.
The pupils came up with all kinds of ideas; from feeding food waste to pigs to creating a website to help shoppers predict what they need to buy better; helping them to reduce the amount of stuff they throw away at the end of the month.
The event coincided with the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen and the hundred of kids who came along definitely left with good ideas on how to reduce food waste. You can read more about it here.
Over the festive period, we have been having some really fun Christmas Tea Parties; with mulled wine, champagne and mince pies.
The guests have enjoyed the usual live music and dancing, as well as performances from local carol singers and at two of the larger tea parties in Edinburgh, we served up a whole lunch for everyone. As always, the events were completely free for the guests to come along to and really brightened up their days.
One of the tea parties, held at a sheltered housing complex in Edinburgh, was filmed by Channel 5 and Sky News and will be broadcast at some point between Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
Thanks a million to all of the people who gave up their holiday time to come and help out at the tea parties!
Throughout November and December, i'll be sharing the story of how SuperJam grew from my Gran's kitchen to the supermarket shelves. You'll be able to come along and hear me speak at the following places:
Last week, I was very kindly invited to visit Wick, which is a few miles from John o' Groats (the most Northernly point of mainland Britain).
The reason for the trip was to give a few talks at local schools, including to over 300 kids at Wick high school. I also had the pleasure of visiting the Laurandy Centre, which was hosting the most Northerly ever SuperJam tea party for 30 or so elderly guests.
It was a really lovely trip and I was shown around by Professor Iain Blaikie, a friend of mine, who organised the trip and is a big believer in getting entrepreneurs, inventors, astronauts and political figures to speak to pupils at the local schools.
We even went for lunch on the shortest street in the world, which is in Wick and is about one and a half meters long!
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As part of the world-famous 'Edinburgh Festival', Foodies Festivals will be hosting a massive food and drink event in Holyrood Park from tomorrow till Sunday.
We will have a stand there, serving freshly baked scones with SuperJam and the amazing Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream. I will also be giving a talk ('SuperJam: The Adventures of Jam Boy') at 11am each day.
You should definitely come along, for some scones and jam and for the chance to see demonstrations by top chefs and to sample some of the many culinary delights that Scotland has to offer.
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For the past four days, we've been handing out samples and telling everyone about SuperJam at the Royal Highland Show.
The Show is Scotland's largest public event, attracting hundreds of thousands of people. It is a sort of celebration of food and agriculture, with tractors, sheep and whisky.
We went through over fifteen thousand oatcakes and two thousand jars of SuperJam and we're definitely all exhausted.
The Queen even visited the hall we were in, which was very exciting. I didn't get a chance to take a decent photograph of our stall in between handing out samples, signing autographs for over-excited school kids and talking to the thousands of people who stopped by to say hi.
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On Sunday, as part of our sponsorship of The SuperJam Great British Race Day at Brighton Racecourse, we served up cream teas to the crowds.
We used Rodda's clotted cream and freshly baked scones and it went down a treat. The races on the day, which you might have seen on Sky Sports or elsewhere, were named after the flavours of our jams.
Over the Summer, we'll be serving up cream teas at events all over the country, so please do pop along and say hello. Next up is the Cockington Proms on 12th July, in Torquay, which we're also a major sponsor of.
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On Wednesday, I had the privilege of meeting HRH Prince Charles. He was a very charming man, as you would probably expect.
The event was a conference run by the Scottish arm of The Princes Trust, which is of course his charity that helps young people set up companies by giving them grants, loans and great advice.
I was supported by them when I was starting out and was invited to give the keynote speech, alongside Michelle Mone.
SuperJam Great British Race day at Brighton Racecourse!
Nice weather we've been having lately, eh?
We will be serving cream teas at all kinds of events over the Summer. The first event this year is at Brighton Racecourse this Sunday, the 7th June.
SuperJam is the headline sponsor of the SuperJam Great British Race Day at Brighton Racecourse this Sunday.
There will be six SuperJam races, Proms in The Paddock with The Sussex Band of the Royal British Legion, a 'Best Banger competition' and traditional seaside entertainment.
We will also be serving thousands of cream teas to the 8,000 people who're coming along, so come and say hi if you're in town!
If you'd like to come, you can buy tickets and find out more info here.
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On Monday, I was interviewed by Declan and Naga on BBC2's Working Lunch program.
I was the 'main guest' on the show and the interview was, according to some of my followers on Twitter, the best i've had in a long time.
You can check out the interview on BBC iPlayer here, if you wish.
There has been a flurry of orders on the website since the interview so it has been all hands on deck in Jam Land - which is why it has taken me so long to blog about it!
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What's more, our FaceBook fan page crossed the 200 fans mark today. To celebrate, we're having a some scones and tea this evening and probably some bubbly.
I have today been spending a bit of time watching the amazing talks and lectures you will find on the 'Do Lectures' site. The speakers include the inventor Trevor Bayliss, author and bread expert Andrew Whitley and Guy Watson of the Riverford Organic box scheme.
The idea behind the event is that 'People who DO things can inspire others to DO things'. Every year, the event invites DOers from business, the arts, campaigning, inventing and so on to share their stories and give insight about what inspires them, what motivates them and why they do what they do.
The event is sponsored by the wonderful Howies company, who produce a great collection of ethical clothing.
David Hieatt, co-founder of the event says "When you listen to their stories, they just light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.
To go find your cause to fight for, your company to go start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb."
The event takes place in West Wales and all of the 60 delegates camp out over the course of the days. For more information, check out the website.
The awards, in their third year, were created by BT Business to celebrate the achievements of various entrepreneurs who have challenged the status quo in their industries. The competition was judged by Peter Jones, of Dragons' Den fame and James Hurley, editor of Growing Business Magazine, among others.
The prize for the award was a photo shoot with the renowned photographer Rankin, famous for his images for the Dove 'Real Women' campaign, the Queen and Kylie Minogue. It was a pretty fun day having my picture taken. I can honestly say that it was the first time I've ever worn make-up...
The overall winner of the competition, crowned 'Most Outstanding Entrepreneur' was Mike Welch, who is a very nice chap indeed. He runs BlackCircles.com, the biggest online retailer of car tires on the internet in the UK.
The photographs taken by Rankin of all of the winners will be exhibited at gallery@oxo in London's South Bank, starting from next Thursday, 29th January. Entry to the exhibition is free and definitely worth a look, the stories of all of the winners are fascinating.
I was recently invited to Palm Springs, California, for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of The Year Awards.
The whole event was an incredible experience, with the best entrepreneurs from all manner of industries being recognised for the steps that they had taken to build amazing businesses, supplying ground-breaking products and creating thousands of jobs.
I met some very inspirational people who gave me some great advice and helped motivate me to take the next steps in growing SuperJam.
At the event, I was grabbed by Diane Brady, the Senior Editor of the massive Business Week Magazine, and fellow Scot, for a quick interview.
Apparently, i'm 'Scotland's Top Young Innovator', lovely!
As reported in the press today, at an awards ceremony in Glasgow last night, I was awarded one of the 'John Logie Baird Awards'. This was after competing in regional and Scotland-wide judging panels, which involved being asked questions by the leading minds in innovation in Scotland.
John Logie Baird is famous as the Scottish inventor of the first working television. Although his version of television is not the same as the type used today, he led the way in the development of what later became one of the most influential technologies of all time. He was a prolific inventor, with creations such as thermal under socks, 'rust-proof' glass razor blades and pneumatic shoes, all of which saw limited success, before creating television.
He even once shorted out Glasgow's electricity supply, trying to produce diamonds!
The John Logie Baird awards were created in his name and I am very proud to have been given one. It is really great for the innovative nature of SuperJam to be celebrated in this way.
There were many wonderful inventions on show last night, including the Walkodile, which helps keep groups of children together when taking them for a walk, in a fun way.
Given all of the doom and gloom in the media, it is great to see innovation being celebrated in this way. Arguably the best way for Scotland to get out of the current economic problem and compete globally in the coming years is to invest in the creation of new technologies and the products of the future. Scotland has a long list of successful inventions from past years and hopefully we can be as inventive in the future.
The John Logie Baird Awards go some way to encouraging me that we can!
This week has seen thousands of events, with tens of thousands of participants all around the world (in about eighty countries) promoting entrepreneurship.
Encouraging young people to think about setting up companies, charities and to develop the products of the future, is something that I think is very important and I put a bit of time into. I was asked to be an 'Ambassador' for the Government-supported Enterprise Week, and have been giving a couple of talks every day at events all over the UK.
I started out in the Orkney Isles, in the far North of Scotland and gave a talk to all of the young people taking part in Young Entreprise up there, about 160 of them. After going to the US for a few days, I gave a talk to about 800 young people at the Leicester Square Odeon with Levi Roots, of Reggae Reggae Sauce fame. I then spoke to a couple of hundred people at the impressive Institute of Directors, then at Lampton School in West London, to the Eton College Entrepreneurship Society and then, to end it off, at New College, in Swindon.
I've taken 12 flights, skipped two nights sleep and given 7 talks in the past fortnight. I'm off to the pub..
You can have a look at the pictures from the day here.
There were about 100 guests and we all enjoyed the wonderful music of Shamisen Club, food from Waitrose and tea from our chums at Today Was Fun.
Some of the boys from the school helping out were dressed in their full tailcoats, with top hats and walking canes. Their help with serving the tea was much appreciated.
The Mayor and Mayoress of Harrow came along. The Mayor was wearing his chain (bling!), which the guests enjoyed talking to him about.
The free raffle caused great excitement, with prizes donated from Jordans Cereals and Famous Grouse, as well as tea and jam.
All in all, it has been quite a week. A hundred tea parties, thousands of scones, thousands of cups of tea and hundreds of balls of wool. A lot of people had a lot of fun because of all of this and we'll soon start work on sewing together all of the squares that were knitted, to be sent over to our friends' orphanage in India, as blankets for the kids.
Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible; especially Contact the Elderly, Waitrose, John Lewis,
Almost 500 people came and 500 scones were buttered and jammed...
Yesterday we hosted our biggest ever SuperJam Tea Party, at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, with the support of our friends at Edinburgh Leisure and the City of Edinburgh Council.
Around 500 people came along for tea from Today Was Fun and scones and cupcakes from Waitrose. Everyone took part in our massive 'knitathon' and we knitted over a hundred squares, which will be knitted together to make blankets for the Gwalior Children's Orphanage in Central India.
There were plenty of people dancing all afternoon to the wonderful music of Moira Hepburn, who was playing her keyboard.
We've got about 100 tea parties planned for this weekend, including a massive event for about 100 people at Harrow School in North London, again supported by our friends at Contact the Elderly , Today Was Fun , Waitrose and John Lewis .
*The picture is of myself with Dan Orr, who is 100 years old. We were overlooking the 47 advice stalls and hundreds of guests drinking tea!
I'm becoming something of a regular on BBC Scotland these days.
You can listen to a nice little chat we had this morning about motivation and achieving what you want in life here. . The part where i'm nattering is about fifteen minutes in.
I think that the entrepreneur's ability to motivate themselves to get up every morning and bash on with their idea is one of the big factors that separates the ideas that work from the ones that don't. It took Dyson hundreds of attempts at building the dual cyclone before he eventually came up with his now world famous vacuum cleaner. A lot of people wouldn't have been able to motivate themselves to get up every day and think about vacuum cleaners.
I've managed to motivate myself to get up every morning for almost six years and think about jam; mostly because I love the stuff and also since I have been able to always think in terms of where i'm aiming to get in the long run. It doesn't matter if today doesn't work out too good, as long as everything on the whole is moving towards where I want to go; transforming the world of jam!
Talking about jam on MacAulay & Co. on Radio Scotland...
It is now the season when folks start making jam at home. Obviously (other than SuperJam..) nothing tastes better than homemade jam. I went on BBC Radio Scotland's MacAuley and Co. show this morning to share my tips for making your own tasty jam at home. You can listen to the broadcast here. Feel free to fast forward to 1:04:00, where the jam chat starts.
I shared my recipe for Raspberry & Cranberry jam, which the Beeb kindly popped on their website here.
The co-presenter Kim had a shot at making the recipe at home but, thankfully, Richard thought the SuperJam version tasted best...
I recently gave a wee talk about setting up business, being a teenage entrepreneur and so on at the British Library. They have posted the video online here. There are also talks by a whole load of entrepreneurs like Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks and Stelios, the EasyJet chap.
To be honest, I've only really written this post so that I can put up this picture. It looks like I am just a head, haha.
Anyway, if you didn't know, this week was 'Enterprise Week'. This is the one week of the year where thousands of enterprise related events take place simultaneously, with the aim of encouraging young people to think about starting their own businesses or become more enterprising in their lives. As this is something that I am quite big on, I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in with helping at various events around the country.
On Monday, I spoke to about 1,000 schoolkids from around Scotland at the annual Young Enterprise Scotland conference. This was quite a laugh and the kids were visibly enthused by my story - hopefully some of them went away thinking 'well, if he can do it then why can't I?...'
The picture at the top of the page is of me 'launching' the Biggart Baillie Innovation Awards at the Glasgow Science Centre. I gave a talk about the process of coming up with my innovation, which led to me being a winner at last years awards. If you have invented something or started an innovative business, I would urge you to check it out . There are three categories (Student, Open and Female) and a prize of £1,000 for each.
I have also been involved in the Make Your Mark Challenge , which is the biggest live enterprise event in the country and will see teams of schoolkids compete next Thursday to solve a problem that will be set on the day. This is being hosted by Heather Suttie, the Xfm DJ and I will be helping to judge the entries.
To finish off the week, I was invited to speak to students at Bath University about starting a business, juggling studies while running one and what help is out there for young entrepreneurs. That was all rounded off by a drink in the rather impressive setting of the city's famous Roman Baths.
I don't mean for this to be another 'I got an award' post but this is a story I really have to write about. On Wednesday, I went over to Chicago to the 'Global Student Entrepreneur Awards', having been chosen to represent the UK (and the University of Strathclyde). I won't write about all the details but basically I had to give a 20 minute presentation to a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs about my business, what I wanted to achieve, my ethics and so on...
Originally, over 700 students around the world were nominated to enter the competition, then 26 were picked to go to Chicago and then they picked 6 based on the presentations. I got to present again and also watched some of the other five guys talking about their businesses and ideas. All of the 26 young entrepreneurs in the competition had incredible businesses, one of my favourites being Ten Minute Media - this guy, Brendan, makes websites for people like Mick Jagger and Natalie Cole. There was also a Swede, Erik, who made software for McDonald's.
I had never met such passionate and driven people my own age - we all shared an enthusiasm for ideas and enterprise and got on very well with oneanother.
Anyway, I ended up winning the competition and also got a special 'Social Impact' prize. It was a really cool few days and
Yesterday we had a stall at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the meadows. It was a pretty sunny day and everyone was out and about. We had a queue of people at the stall all day (5 hours) and sold an unbelievable amount of jam (I had to get my Dad to drive home at about lunchtime for more stock!).
The articles in this week's Edinburgh Evening News and Herald and Post probably helped - everyone seemed to know the SuperJam story.
I couldn't get a good picture at any point - the stall was surrounded by people all day until we completely ran out of jam at about 5pm and retired to the pub.
The SuperJam tastings are continuing. I'm clocking up railmiles faster than the average GNER ticket conductor. Next week I will be staying in Birmingham ('oooh, get you with the travel') and visiting some of the Waitrose stores in the West Midlands. Here's the places/dates if you fancy popping along to say hello:
Monday 11th: Hall Green Tuesday 12th: Newport (not Wales) Wednesday 13th: None. Thursday 14th: Going on the telly Friday 15th: Stourbridge Saturday 16th: Droitwich Sunday 17th: Wolverhampton
Monday 18th: Wolverhampton Tuesday 19th: Four Oaks Wednesday 20th: None. Thursday 21st: The Highland Show, Ingliston (Scotland) Friday 22nd: The Highland Show Saturday 23rd: The Highland Show Sunday 24th: The Highland Show
